Our chart of the day comes from this article in Politico Magazine by Doug McAdam and Karina Kloos, about how the contemporary Republican party has its roots in the racial struggles of the 1960s. It's a good overview of that history, even if you may not find any shocking revelations there. But this chart they use is particularly striking, showing the racial makeup of Barack Obama's and Mitt Romney's voters in 2012: I've written a lot about how some people within the Republican Party, and the conservative movement more generally, find political value in fostering white resentment. Sometimes that resentment is directed at specific figures like Barack Obama, and at those times it usually reaches back to the 1960s to prey on white fears of angry black people coming to do you financial and physical harm (the best comment about Eric Holder's resignation yesterday undoubtedly came from Fox News host Andrea Tantaros, who said of Holder, "He ran the DOJ much like the Black Panthers would. That...

Depending on how you define it, the American culture war between liberals and conservatives can stretch back all the way to the nineteenth century. But I prefer to date its current iteration to the 1960s, when the hippies and the squares gazed across a high school football field at one another and said, "Man, I hate those guys." However the actual 1960s played out, in our memories, the hippies were definitely the good guys, and the winners in the end. (This is in no small part because liberals created all the novels, TV shows, and movies that chronicled the period.) They may have been a little silly, but there's one thing that's undeniably true: They had all the fun. While the squares were getting buzz cuts, convincing themselves that the Vietnam War was a great idea, and nodding along with Richard Nixon's encomiums to the Silent Majority, the hippies were getting high, dancing to cool music, and above all, getting laid . And the squares are still mad about it, even the ones who weren...

W hy on earth did the Scots, largely quiescent as part of Great Britain for three centuries, suddenly become the mouse that roared? It wasn't because they became besotted watching re-runs of Braveheart or Rob Roy , or even because they coveted more of a share of North Sea oil revenues. No, the Scots got sick and tired of Thatcherite policies imposed from London. Thanks to the partial form of federalism known as "devolution" provided by the Labour government of Tony Blair in 1997, Scotland got to keep such progressive policies as free higher education and an intact national health service, while the rest of the U.K. partly privatized the health service and began compelling young people to go into debt to finance college like their American cousins. But as long as progressive Scotland, with just one Conservative M.P. sent to the national parliament at Westminster, remained part of Great Britain, its own policies were in jeopardy. So the near-miss referendum was one part revived Scottish...

(AP Photo/The Monitor, Gabe Hernandez) I n Pennsylvania’s gubernatorial race, education has emerged as one of the most heated issues. A Quinnipiac University poll released this month found education ranked as the most important issue for voters, after jobs and the economy. Despite contentious politics surrounding reform of public education from kindergarten through twelfth grade, Republican incumbent Tom Corbett and Democratic challenger Tom Wolf have discovered that plugging expansion of pre-kindergarten programs wins them political points without treading into treacherous waters. That is, as long as they don't mention the mothers who will inevitably benefit, too. The governor’s record is haunted by his 2011 budget, from which he cut nearly $900 million in public education funds—a decrease of more than 10 percent. The severe cuts have garnered national attention , particularly for Philadelphia—the state’s largest school district—which wrestled with a $304 million cut this past school...

All* Above All I turned thirty-eight this year. This month the Hyde Amendment will also be thirty-eight, and since its passage, we have seen a growing number of abortion restrictions proposed and enacted across the country. The Hyde Amendment, passed by Congress in 1976, restricts abortion coverage for the young people, women and families most in need. It prevents federal dollars from being used to cover abortion. And while there is an exception in cases of rape, incest, or to save the life of the pregnant woman, it is enforced irregularly. There is no health exception to this policy for women covered by federal insurance plans. We have watched Congress pass this amendment year after year, for thirty-eight years. For nearly four decades we have watched this restrictive policy beget new anti-abortion, anti-women and anti-sex ballot measures, amendments, and legislation. We take on these fights one by one, state by state, defending the right to control our bodies. We win some, and we...

This article originally appeared on Facing South , a website published by the Institute for Southern Studies. I t's been more than four years since the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission , a ruling that expanded the ability of corporations and unions to influence politics. Now, with two election cycles completed, a series of studies have emerged to assess what impact it's had on our political system. One of the first and most thorough investigations into Citizens United 's effects on elections, published in July by professors at the University of Alberta and Emory University and a researcher at Competition Economics, concludes that the ruling has significantly benefited Republican candidates for state legislatures -- especially in North Carolina and Tennessee. Before the January 2010 Citizens United decision, corporations and labor unions were prohibited from making so-called independent expenditures for federal races --...

(AP Photo/Seth Perlman) Tanya Melin of Chicago, right, Service Employees International Union members, home care consumers, workers, and allies rally in support of home care funding at the Illinois State Capitol Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2012 in Springfield, Illinois. O n June 30, the Supreme Court ruled that a key strategy used by unions to raise the earnings and professionalism of home-care workers was illegal. Since the 1990s, the labor movement has worked with states and countries to get laws or executive orders to allow home-care workers to be treated as employees of public authorities rather than as individual contractors. The result has been to allow these workers to form unions and to bargain collectively with government for better wages and working standards. In the Harris v. Quinn case, however, the Court held that workers could still unionize, but that they were not true public employees. Unions thus could not collect dues from workers who choose to remain outside the bargaining...

It looks like the debate over what to do about ISIS has given Republicans one fewer thing to argue about : A roiling national debate over how to deal with the radical Islamic State and other global hot spots has prompted a sudden shift in Republican politics, putting a halt to the anti-interventionist mood that had been gaining credence in the party. The change is evident on the campaign trail ahead of the November midterm elections and in recent appearances by the GOP’s prospective 2016 presidential candidates, with a near-universal embrace of stronger military actions against the group that has beheaded two American journalists. A hawkish tone has become integral to several key Republican Senate campaigns, with a group of candidates running in battleground states calling attention to their ties to veterans and their support for the U.S. military at every turn. The most notable shift has come from Rand Paul, who used to talk a lot about the dangers of interventionism and foreign...

Dangerous radicals who thought women should be able to vote. (1927 photo from the Duke University Archives)

I'll give Republicans credit for this: they keep trying to figure out why their party remains unappealing to large and important groups of voters. They've been mulling over their problem with Latino voters for some time, and now Politico has gotten a hold of a study commissioned by some GOP bigwigs to figure out why women keep giving more of their votes to Democrats: But in Washington, Republican policies have failed to sway women — in fact, they appear to have turned women off. For example, the focus groups and polls found that women "believe that 'enforcing equal pay for equal work' is the policy that would 'help women the most.'" "Republicans who openly deny the legitimacy of the issue will be seen as out of touch with women's life experiences," the report warned, hinting at GOP opposition to pay-equity legislation. It's the policy item independents and Democrats believe will help women the most. The groups suggest a three-pronged approach to turning around their relationship with...

(AP Photo/Molly Riley) Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal delivers the keynote address during Faith and Freedom Coalition's Road to Majority event in Washington, Saturday, June 21, 2014. UPDATE (September 1, 2014): A ruling issued on Sunday by a U.S. federal court has put on hold enforcement of the Louisiana law discussed in this commentary, which requires doctors who perform abortions to obtain admitting privileges to a hospital within 30 miles of the clinic at which they practice. Under the ruling, doctors are allowed to continue performing abortions while they seek the required privileges. I n 1973, abortion became a constitutionally protected right in the United States. But, judging from the repeated full-fledged attacks on Roe v. Wade and all the protections it provides, it's as if the anti-choice movement has been plugging their ears and singing, “La la la, I can’t hear you!” for the last forty-one years. Unfortunately, its members have proven themselves to be good at multitasking,...

This article originally appeared at Right Wing Watch , the blog of People For the American Way. T his week Dinesh D’Souza’s America: Imagine the World Without Her is sitting at the top of the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list . Earlier this month, the movie version crossed the $14 million mark , which moved it into six place overall for earnings by a political “documentary.” But D’Souza is not just out to make money, of course. At a June screening of America , right-wing strategist Ralph Reed called D’Souza “a national treasure for our cause.” D’Souza’s last movie, 2016: Obama’s America , was designed to keep Barack Obama from being re-elected. America is his attempt to prevent Hillary Clinton from being elected in 2016, wrapped in an attack on the progressive movement. At a time when corporate power and profits are at record highs, America the movie argues that America the country is being led down the road to national “suicide” and socialist tyranny in a plan that was...

P eriodically, conservatives latch on to some emerging cultural development and decide that this the thing that will allow them to win over young voters, providing some crack in the door through which they can shove a foot and bring their message of free markets and small government to an audience they're convinced is just waiting to hear it. Remember " South Park conservatives "? There was supposed to be a whole generation of irreverent right-wingers, turned off by the excesses of political correctness and ready to rush to the arms of the GOP. It didn't work out that way. And lately, Republicans have been over the moon for Uber. In case you aren't aware, GOP politicians have been lining up to shower the company with love. Marco Rubio is an Uber fan. Newt Gingrich is an Uber crusader. The RNC has a petition you can sign in support of Uber in its conflicts with local taxi regulations that keep the company out. Here's a recent Politico piece : Kristen Soltis Anderson, a Republican...

Since taking control of state government in 2011, Republicans rolled back North Carolina's progressive voting laws. A new regime of fewer voting days and voter ID requirements will be in place for November's legislative and congressional elections.